Regional News

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela yesterday ordered the US embassy in Caracas to reduce staff from 100 to 17 amid the worst diplomatic flare-up between the two ideological foes since socialist President Nicolas Maduro was elected in 2013 .

HAVANA (Reuters) - The most important US agricultural delegation to visit Cuba in more than a decade began three days of meetings yesterday, hoping to find potential business partners and urge the US Congress to lift the trade embargo against the Caribbean nation .

MIAMI/HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is willing to restore diplomatic relations with the United States as soon as the Obama administration declares its intent to take the country off a list of state sponsors of terrorism, according to a senior Cuban official .

SAO PAULO, (Reuters) - Brazilian police cracked down on striking truckers yesterday, arresting protesters and ending roadblocks in all but two states after demonstrations turned violent and slowed food deliveries in Latin America’s largest economy .

NEW YORK/MANAGUA, (Reuters) - Venezuela, once a proud exporter of premium coffee, has been reduced to swapping crude oil for growing volumes of Nicaraguan coffee beans to make sure worsening economic turmoil does not prevent people from getting their caffeine fix .

CARACAS, (Reuters) - Venezuelan military officers are questioning four American missionaries after they took part in a health initiative and distributed medicine in a coastal village, the head of a Venezuelan evangelical group said yesterday .

(Trinidad Express) Minister of The Environment and Water Resources Ganga Singh yesterday afternoon announced that the water coming from the Caroni Water Treatment Plant, was now safe, according to World Health organisation Standards .

BUENOS AIRES, (Reuters) - There is no evidence that President Cristina Fernandez tried to whitewash Iran’s purported involvement in a deadly 1994 bombing, an Argentine judge told Reuters in an interview yesterday after dismissing the case .

HAVANA/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Cuba would agree to restore diplomatic relations with the United States in time for the April Summit of the Americas if Washington quickly and convincingly removes the Caribbean country from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a senior Cuban official said yesterday .

SAN CRISTOBAL, Ve-nezuela, (Reuters) - Sporadic protests flared in different parts of Ven-ezuela yesterday, a day after a policeman shot dead a teenager during a demonstration against President Nicolas Maduro’s government in the volatile city of San Cristobal .

(Trinidad Express) The time has come for Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela to move from simply being “good neighbours” to becoming “good sisters and brothers”, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said .

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) - Haiti’s meager hotel offerings got a major boost yesterday with the inauguration of a brand new Marriott in the heart of the capital, the latest in a series of modern additions to the impoverished Caribbean island’s hospitality sector .

HAVANA, (Reuters) - Cuba President Raul Castro yesterday pinned medals on five spies, declaring them national heroes for infiltrating right-wing exile groups that plotted against Havana and for then enduring long prison terms in the United States .

RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuters) - The Brazilian judge presiding over criminal proceedings against charismatic entrepreneur Eike Batista, once Brazil’s richest man, was seen yesterday driving a Porsche belonging to the fallen tycoon that had been seized by the court .

MIAMI, (Reuters) - Wildrick Guerrier, a refugee from the devastation of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, died in a Haitian jail in 2011, 10 days after the United States revoked his temporary permission to stay in the country and deported him and 26 other men .

CARACAS (Reuters) - The mayor of Vene-zuela’s capital Caracas will fight charges of plotting violence against the socialist government, his lawyer said yesterday, denouncing the accusations as baseless .

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba has freed Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian after more than three years in jail, his company said yesterday, resolving a case that had strained Cuban-Canadian relations and alarmed foreign investors .

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti’s president and prime minister attended a rare official funeral yesterday for the victims of a Carnival stampede that killed 17 people earlier this week, accompanying relatives of the dead and hundreds of other mourners at the open air ceremony on a main city avenue .

(Jamaica Observer) THE University of Technology Jamaica, (UTech) on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ganja Labs, USA — a subsidiary of Ganja Inc — to collaborate on research in science, technology and best practices in the cultivation of medicinal marijuana under controlled and secure conditions .